Day 346/365

Prompt: cake / singing / slippery


The knife was slippery,
dropped out of her hands
and clacked to the wooden floor.
Without a hint he'd been nodding off,
he rose from the chair,
took two monstrous steps
and flung the back of his open hand against her face
like a gauntlet.
Her hijab flipped off her head
as she doubled over,
and her hair spiraled down behind her.
She knelt down and mouthed the words to a prayer.
"Don't scare me like that," he demanded.
"I thought a bullet would crack my skull."
She said nothing,
still prone from the blow.
"Cover that rat's nest."
She shakily reached for her headdress
and pulled it back on,
tucking locks out of his view.
"What was a knife for anyway?"
"To cut your cake, husband," she answered quietly,
but clearly so he understood her.
"Yes, good."
With that, he sat back down
in front of the television,
watching Wayne's World on VHS again.
(No television here for years.)
She gathered herself
and tried not to think of the searing pain behind her cheekbone
and she carefully picked up the knife
and rinsed it off.
(She didn't need further wrath.)
Cutting quietly the thin but juicy cake,
she lifted the slice to the plate
and carried it to him,
singing a birthday song to him quietly, but clearly.
He didn't look at her as he took the plate
and began scooping pieces of the cake into his mouth.
As she waited for his dismissal,
he looked up to her.
"Where's your piece?"
"I'll make some toast with butter and cinnamon later."
He nodded and continued to eat,
but he did not dismiss her.
She did not mind and stood beside him,
waited for the first symptoms.


ewr